Kernel Haul

The latest Kernel haul (I went to the brewery yesterday): From left to right, Pale Ale Centennial Citra (ABV 5.4), India Pale Ale Double Citra (ABV 9.8) and three bottles of Breakfast Stout (French Oak) (ABV 9.3). One of the Breakfast Stout bottles is for me, the other two are gifts. I’m very excited about this one as it’s the first cask-aged beer from Kernel – as far as I understand it the stout has been aged on French red wine barrels, but I might be wrong – feel free to correct me if I am.

Oh, and I also wanted to share some news of potentially earth-shattering consequences (at least if you are a beer geek): Starting next week, Kernel beers will for the first time be available outside the UK (beyond festivals and individual bottles, that is). Of course it’s the Mikkeller Bar in Copenhagen that’s doing the importing. If you live nearby (say, in Malmö, for example), it’s totally worth the trip over the bridge. The blog post I’m linking to is in Danish, but it doesn’t contain any more specific information – it doesn’t say which beers, how much of it there is, etc (except it looks like about 12 kegs in the photo), but still – the standards at Kernel are such that you can pretty much drink any one of their beers with confidence that it will be excellent.

EDIT: I emailed Evin and asked about the cask (duh!) and he says it’s a french Bordeaux oak cask that probably did not contain wine before (i.e. it was originally made for Bordeaux wine), and was previously used by De Molen to age their Tsarina Esra stout. So now you know.

EDIT 2: I emailed Evin again (thanks for your patience, Evin!) and asked what beers they’d sent to Mikkeller Bar. This is the selection: 2 19-liter cornie kegs each of Export India Porter (ABV 5.9), IPA Columbus (ABV 7.1), IPA Double Black (ABV 9.8), Rye Pale Ale (ABV 5.5), Pale Ale Motueka, Nelson Sauvin, Pacific Jade (ABV 5.3) and 1 keg each of IPA Galaxy (ABV 7.4), IPA Citra (ABV 7.2), IPA Black (ABV 7.4), Breakfast Stout (ABV 9.3) and Export Stout (ABV 7.4). If you are in a position to go there, my advice is, for the love of all that is holy and good, try the IPA Double Black (my candidate for Best Beer of 2011), and then, for all that is slightly less holy and good, try the Breakfast Stout. Then try the rest of the. You may only get this one chance, fools.

Hope the sample is good – I know I’ve hyped the beer but now I’ve heard from a couple people that it bottles weird. But I’ve never had any issues with it from bottle, and that’s the only way I’ve had it.